User blog:Thornclaw Braveheart/Braveheart Critic: Top 10 Fantasy Villains
Hello, Thornclaw Braveheart is ready for his first episode of The Braveheart Critic! Top 10 Fantasy Villains it is! My favorite genre of any book or movie is definitely fantasy, but that's a big stretch and could mean anything from some good-old LotR, to a few aspects of Star Wars. But regardless, they always seem to have great villains! So, prepare yer evil laughs, and yer evil plans: Here are the Top 10 Fantasy Villains! Number 10 Jadis, from The Chronicles of Narnia. Jadis, better known as the White Witch, is a half-Giant, half-Jinn (which C.S. Lewis places as the product of Adam and his first wife, Lilith), and the last hereditary ruler of Charn. She studied dark magic when she was younger, and while queen, her sister contended with her for the throne in a long civil war, until Jadis, after all her armies had been slaughtered and her sister was at the palace gates, she spoke a magic word known simply as the Deplorable Word, and a moment later, as she puts it, she was the only living thing on what used to be Charn. With her alone in the desolated world, Jadis cast a spell on herself, so she would be immobilized as if a statue, alongside the statues of all her predecessors, until someone would ring an enchanted bell in that room. Some time later, it was rung by one Diggory Kirke, and Jadis awoke. After an adventure in Kirke's world (Earth), Jadis ended up in a newly-created world, witnessing as a certain lion's voice founded Narnia. Jadis fled from the lion, and due to eating a certain apple from the "Tree of Youth", managed to live well beyond normal years. For 900 years Jadis hid in the north of Narnia, learning new magic, gathering forces, and manipulating the winter as her new weapon. And so, after 900 years of hiding, Jadis invaded Narnia and rather quickly conquered it, ruling for another century that was "always winter, and never Christmas." That is, until the four Pevensie children appeared in Narnia from Earth and, after many adventures, eventually aided the lion Aslan in defeating her. Although Jadis was clearly killed by Aslan, there have been attempts to resurrect her, but none have legitimately succeeded. Jadis is 10th on this list mostly because her goals are like any normal villain: To take over whatever she sees. But in The Magician's Nephew, she acts very pompous, bossy, and admittedly, a real whiner at times. But she's very self-confident despite running away from Aslan repeated times, but is also very good at imitating a kind person, as when she tricked Edmund Pevensie into believing that she was a gentle, although somewhat strict queen who wanted him as her successor, thus manipulating Edmund's greed and causing him to betray his siblings and inform her that Aslan had returned to Narnia. Mary Sue Score: 40 Number 9 Loki Laufeysson, from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Loki's evil because he spent his entire life believing he was the loved son of Odin and brother to Thor, whom he loved as the brother he thought he had been. But then, he learned that he was actually the son of Laufey, the frost giant king who had been defeated by Odin centuries ago. Odin had adopted Loki after Laufey's defeat in hopes of uniting the Aesir and the Frost Giants one day, but Loki takes it the other way: He believes that it is merely to secure his real father's obedience. Loki finally realizes how jealous he is of his brother's position as heir to the throne of Asgard and conspires with his father to overthrow Odin and cause Thor to be banished to Earth. However, after eventually redeeming himself, Thor returns to see that Loki has taken over Asgard, Odin is in a coma, and Laufey's giants have taken over the kingdom. However, Loki has a moment of regret and, as Laufey prepares to kill the unconscious Odin, disintegrates him with Odin's spear. However, he then goes to destroy Jotunheim, the kingdom of the frost giants, but Thor, who has found a sense of honor and pity, tries to stop him, and only just succeeds by destroying the rainbow bridge that connects all worlds together. Loki falls down the remains of the bridge into Earth, and Thor continues to help his father rule Asgard for a year. Loki, however, is taken up by a race called the Chitauri, who agree to help him conquer Earth in exchange for a magical artifact, which Loki steals after using a mind-control device on two members of S.H.I.E.L.D. He is captured by the Avengers, however (including a returned Thor), but uses the tension between the team members to help him escape. He then spends the rest of the movie The Avengers assembling the Chitauri army and dualing with both Iron Man and Thor. However, after Iron Man throws a nuclear missile intend for NYC into the Chitauri space station, Loki's army is somehow deactivated, Phantom Menace style (yes, that does suck). Loki is captured and send back to Asgard in chains as the Avengers split up for the time being. Loki is evil, as I said, because he wants revenge for having his life lived without knowing who he was, even his own species. But the reason he's only #9 is because he wasn't particularly successful, notably when he tries to aggravate The Hulk and doesn't realize that the latter only becomes The Hulk when he gets angry, and therefore takes Loki and completely owns him. Mary Sue Score: 26 Number 8 Tolian Soran, from Star Trek Generations. This guy wants what all villains seek: Immortality. He starts off as a common of a humanoid race called the El Aurian, who are known for living for centuries. His entire family is brutally massacred by the Borg race, and he was a refugee on a transport trapped in an energy ribbon which was an entrance to the time dimension called the Nexus. While the refugees were trapped in the Nexus, they got to see memories of their choosing, and Soran saw visions of a life where his wife and children hadn't been killed, and wished never to leave this dimension. However, he and a few other refugees were beamed onto the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-B. Soran immediately asked to return, but was immediately knocked unconscious. He spent the next 78 years plotting to return to the Nexus, no matter what the consequences. Eventually he figured out a way, but was confronted by the captain of Enterprise NCC-1701-D, Jean-Luc Picard. He intended to destroy the star of Veridian, which would also destroy all the planets of the system, with him stationed on Veridian III with a rather 21s century looking missile launcher. As the energy ribbon of the Nexus arrived on the sky of Veridian III, Soran launched his missile at the star, destroying it and all the planets of the system. However, Picard left the Nexus to right before Soran destroyed the star, and freed James T. Kirk from the Nexus. They both tried to destroy the launcher, with Kirk on a bridge that fell down a cliff, with him on it. However, this distraction caused Picard to lock the self-destruct on the launcher right when Soran arrives, and it explodes, killing the El Aurian in the process. Mary Sue Score: 36 Number 7 Sauron, from The Lord of the Rings. Sauron is on this list mostly because he is a perfect aspect of evil; his greed for the lost One Ring will drive him to cause any form of mayhem possible to get it back. He has thousands of orcs and other creatures at his command, his greed affecting any bearer of his Ring, and a host of minor villains who will stop at nothing to please their master. Sauron is only #7 on this lift, however, because he rarely does much himself besides show Frodo his cat's eyeball, make quotes that sound like he's on narcotics, and for ONE BLOODY SCENE in the movie adaption he does fighting, in a steel pincushion. He's more like The Hulk in the movies than a sneaky, plotting, diabolical villain, which J.R.R. Tolkien portrays him as in the books. He also doesn't talk much about Sauron's appearance, making him all the more subtle and intimidating. Mary Sue Score: 47 Number 6 Davy Jones, from Pirates of the Caribbean. Jeez, do I love villains with tentacles, and even more do I love Scottish accents. Davy Jones has both, and even more. His villainy starts when he is given amazing power by his love interest, the sea goddess Calypso, but in return he has to perform the duty of ferrying drowned souls to the afterlife, and every ten years he can go onto dry land, to be with Calypso. However, he loses faith in her and forgets his responsibility, and ends up mutating into a half-sea creature, half-man. His ship, The Flying Dutchman, takes on the appearance of a ship that has been on the bottom of the sea for years, and his crew gain physical appearances similar to underwater creatures, too. And Jones then, no longer trusting Calypso, carved out his own heart, locked it away in a chest, and turned his life to a life of marauding as the pirate bogeyman. Only difference is, he actually exists. With tentacles for a beard, one arm a clab craw, and a whalebone leg, Davy Jones is an utterly intimidating person. His only joy in life now is to punish those who escape their fate, particularly those who make a deal with him. In the 2nd and 3rd PotC movies, Davy Jones is intent on catching Jack Sparrow, who owes him his soul as a debt. Sparrow wants to cheat out of servitude to Jones by killing him, but the only way to do so is to stab his heart, but whoever stabs the heart must take Jones' place, as "the Dutchman must always have a captain." After a movie and a half of both searching for the heart and waging war with the unusual alliance of Jones and the East India Trading Company, the heart is finally stabbed and Jones' killed by a half-dead Orlando Bloom. Jones' villainy comes from his fear and hatred of Calypso, whom he believes does not love him at all and is merely toying around with him, and Jones wants to be the master of his own destiny. However, he also feels regret for his own lack of foresight and believes that all that he has become may be his fault. But when you've got a tentacle face, a pet kraken to summon at will, and a ghostly ship willed with half-oceanic undead sailors, it's fairly easy to be a menacing villain. And who isn't bad-butt when he can play an organ with his beard? Mary Sue Score: 63 Number 5 Palpatine (AKA Darth Sidious), from Star Wars. This guy is a little surprising to be on my list, I guess, but I put him here pretty much because nobody knows why he is evil. He's just a Sith and nobody knows WHY he became one. He just ends up one at some point. He is the plotting mastermind behind the faces of many other Star Wars villains, and sneaks his way through the ranks of the Galactic Republic until he ends up their supreme leader for decades, apparently the face of the Clone Wars, but in secrecy, plotting the Republic's downfall in favor of a new regime, ruled by the Sith. But Palpatine doesn't just want an empire. He doesn't want a successor who can take him down, as he did his own master, so he kills off each of his apprentices. He sends both Darth Maul and Count Dooku to their doom, and after gaining probably the most powerful (and the most whiny) Jedi as his new heir, he uses him all he can, but due to Darth Vader's injuries on Mustafar, he will never become as powerful as Palpatine, and so the Sith Emperor seeks out a new appentice to replace Vader, finding the young Jedi Luke Skywalker, Vader's own son. However, Luke never turns to the Dark Side and eventually uses his own apparent sacrifice, electrocuted by the Sith Lightning of Palpatine, to help turn his father back, and Vader throws Palpatine down the Death Star 2's recycle bin. A little bit low for a villain death, but still, an iconic one. I know Palpatine was cloned and his clone takes off where the original left, but he doesn't last too long, so I won't go into detail. But Palpatine's mysteriously unknown reasons for villainy, his subtle infiltration of the Galactic Republic, and his coup that brought down the Jedi Order and the rise of the Galactic Empire prove that he is one of the most successful villains of all time. Mary Sue Score: 43 Number 4 Tom Riddle (AKA Lord Voldemort), from Harry Potter. Voldemort's villainy originates from his personal goal to live forever, and he does a good job at seeking this! He murders his parents, massacres hundreds of innocents, and is absolutely obsessed with hunting down Harry Potter, who destroyed his body, but he survived because he split his soul into seven pieces and embedded them in hidden objects, or Horcruxes. Over half of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is devoted to hunting them down. Voldemort's restored body, in the fourth book, is absolutely creepy, and Ralph Fiennes' acting role in the movies is great too. Pale skin, bald, no human nose to speak of, red eyes, and a chilling voice, and he always has a sadistic streak that makes him an iconic villain. And who doesn't love an evil wizard? Mary Sue Score: 36 Number 3 Joffrey Baratheon, from A Song of Ice and Fire. Okay, this kid is a psycho. You might not necessarily call him a villain, seeing as the series doesn't really have any, but I think he's worth it, despite only living to be 13. He's a maniac, sadistic, and a completely horrible ruler, probably because his parents were siblings. And he actually was arranging for people's murders by the time he was 12. Okay, it goes like this: He thinks he's the son of King Robert of Westeros, but he's really the product of his mother and her incestuous relationship with her twin brother, Jaime Lannister. Even as a child, Joffrey was sadistic. He believed that the king was his real father and wanted acceptance from him, but was an absolutely spoiled kid and believed that his father would accept anything he did. At a young age, when he learned that a cat in the palace he grew up in was pregnant, he carved open the cat's stomach to see for himself, and showed the unborn and dead kittens to his "father", who was absolutely shocked. He would also bully his younger brother, Prince Tommen (also not really the son of the king, who never had any children with his wife), but when he was betrothed to the daughter of his apparent father's best friend, he tried to act very kind and honorable. However, this didn't stop him from trying as much as possible to bully anyone who is not of the lineage as he is. When his "father" is killed in a hunting accident arranged by his mother, Joffrey immediately begins a new regime, making all his close relatives new councilors, orders the execution of his betrothed's father (in front of her own eyes, in fact), causes four other nobles of Westeros to rise up in rebellion and declare themselves rivalring kings, including the late King Robert's brother, who was informed that Joffrey was illegitimate. While king, Joffrey would constantly have his personal bodyguards, supposed to be the most noble order of knights in Westeros, physically and sexually abuse his 12-year-old fiancee every time that a battle was lost in the civil war, which was rather often. Due to bad living conditions because of all the supplies being sent to his army and the declarations by his rival uncle, the claimant King Stannis, that he was not the rightful king (which are correct claims), riots break out and Joffrey is very nearly toppled. Joffrey's dwarfism-afflicted uncle, Tyrion (a brother of his real father), was also constantly abused despite serving as an acting "Hand", basically prime minister, but once the official Hand returned from war, Tyrion was degraded. Finally tired of abusing his betrothed and preferring another, Joffrey broke off the engagement and arranged a new horror: For his uncle to marry her instead. Tyrion, however, chose to act as if he were not married to her at all, as he would have preferred his own choice of spouse. And when Jofrrey learns that, via the betrayal of some rebel lords, his ex-fiancee's brother (one of the rebel kings) was murdered, he asks for the head so he can force her to eat it at his wedding feast. Of course this doesn't happen, because at the wedding, Joffrey drinks a poisoned wine. Although Tyrion and his wife are blamed, the real conspiracy was formed by the grandmother of Joffrey's new wife and a local noble. He wasn't mourned by anyone except his mother, who soon degraded into an alcoholic, corrupt, psychomaniac regent who tried to keep Joffrey's younger brother and successor, Tommen, from trying to rule and eventually this leads to her own downfall. Talk about creepy! Mary Sue Score: 30 Number 2 Galbatorix, from The Inheritance Cycle. This guy is basically Palpatine and Voldemort combined. He's an evil monarch who betrayed his order, the Dragon Riders, and convinced others to join him and topple the Riders, take over the land of Alagaesia, and declare himself king. He takes the hearts of dragons and uses them to preserve his life for almost a century, purging the Dragon Riders, but a few remain in hiding. Actually, only two. And one of them mentors a young Eragon, who has found a dragon egg and bonded with the baby, and they go into hiding with a group of freedom fighters (but the old ex-Rider is killed in the process). Galbatorix then goes into a huge obsession with finding Eragon, similar to Voldemort's obsession with Harry Potter, but also has a thought that he can turn the young Rider to his side, like Palpatine with Luke Skywalker. However, Galbatorix's other obsession with living forever eventually brings him to his doom, when his evil Dragon Rider protege Murtagh turns good at the last moment, similar to Darth Vader. Although Galbatorix makes no appearance until the final book, simply the way people TALK about him is menacing. And when there's a villain who likes like an evil Renaissance Spaniard (no offense, Grandpa), he'll always be creepy. DON'T WATCH THE MOVIE! Mary Sue Score: 56 Number 1 Orcus, a demon of the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons. If you want badarseness, look for a demon mastermind who is in total control of ALL undead in the universe. Orcus was originally a primordial, an elemental being of chaotic nature, but after the Astral gods defeated the primordials in a long war to control the mortal world, Orcus, among others, retreated to the deepest depths of their own dimension, the Elemental Chaos. In there, he and the other primordials who fled were warped by the demonic energy of the Abyss, the lowest level of the Chaos. And when he emerged, he was the Prince of the Undead, a vicious demon who had been gifted control of all undead. He has slain Astral deities, taken down numerous other demons, and led armies of ghouls, zombies, and lichs in countless invasions on rivals all across the many planes of the world. In D&D statistics, he is of Level 33, and very few real players have met him in battle. He is a classic of the game, having been a main villain ever since the game's inception in 1974. And now, he even has his picture on the front of the 4th Edition's Monster Manual. Mary Sue Score: 47 Epilogue Thanks for joining me on this fantasy-filled ride, I hope you liked my choices! Next up is Top 10 Patrick Star Quotes, expect it in a few days! And after that...request time!!!!!! Category:Blog posts